USPTO Grants Bezos Patent On '60s-Era Chargebacks 144
theodp writes "Chargebacks on computing resources are certainly nothing new, dating to the '60s. But five decades later, the USPTO has deemed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' invention — Dynamic Pricing of Web Services Utilization — worthy of a new patent. From the patent: 'Utilization of a storage resource may be measured in terms of a quantity of data stored (e.g., bytes, megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), etc.) per unit of time (e.g., second, day, month, etc.). Similarly, communication bandwidth utilization may be measured in terms of a quantity of data transmitted per unit of time (e.g., megabits per second). Processing resource utilization may be measured as an aggregate number of units of processing effort (e.g., central processing unit (CPU) cycles, transactions, etc.) utilized, or as a rate of processing effort utilization per unit of time (e.g., CPU cycles or transactions per second).' Sound familiar, Greyglers? Another example of why it's not wise to grant software patents when people don't know much about computer history."
Re:Shit! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, increase the budget instead: give perks to employees that deny patents like this.
How does Amazon survive? (Score:0, Interesting)
If somebody just sends the Patent Office this Slashdot article, then they would be obligated to withdraw the patent; thus nullifying Amazon's incredible ability to claim ownership of common sense business processes and methods that anyone can think of.
How is it that Amazon still keeps on getting away with these illegal patents?
Re:Worthless Patent (Score:1, Interesting)
WTF? That's not an innovative solution to a problem.
You've got to understand that there are a lot of under-employed physicists out there who can't get academic work because they didn't ass-kiss their professors. With no good references the only type of work these physicists can get are either tech support work in call centres (but that has mostly been outsourced to India) or work in a patent office. Since most physicists aren't really interested in patents, perpetual motion machines, or business processes, they'll just rubber stamp whatever comes their way while working on the theory of the universe when their employers are not watching.
If patents were really meant to be useful in the first place, the government would have shut down Eastern Texas years ago (as an eminent domain, such as what they did with Centralia [wikipedia.org]).
Re:Free markets (Score:3, Interesting)
"A vast majority of USPTO decisions are right"
[citation needed]
Flashback. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe only people who have been in the field over 40 years should be able to file patents -- at least they might recognize crap like this and be too embarrassed to actually apply for a patent like this.
Perhaps we need to enable 'reverse patent trolls'. If someone patents something and the patent is later invalidated, the person (company) who made the application must pay the challenger's legal expenses. In addition, the entity filing for the application must pay the challenger, with interest, all revenue derived from the patent (both licensing fees paid to them and the added value derived from the patent in their own products - such as 'one-click' during the life of the patent). In addition, the entity applying for the patent would have to pay back (with interest) all licensing fees they were paid back to the people who paid them (yes, this is double!).
People might think a little more about filing bogus patents with a system like this.
Been there, seen that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Way back around 1972, I worked on a CDC time-share system. They charged 4 cents per CPU second, 1 cent per PRU (640 characters) transferred to/from disk, and 0.2 cents per kiloword-second of memory used.
Except after 5PM, when the rates went down 50%.
Luckily I worked for the computer center, so the long assembly times ( 5 minutes ) were charged against a funny-money account. Still it was humbling that one missing comma and I'd wasted about 20 minutes of real time and $12, when $12 was real money.
Re:Shit! (Score:3, Interesting)
USPTO is financed by patent fees. So that's why they grant patents without checking the validity of the claim.
If they were to pay a fine for every patent that didn't hold then they would be much more careful.
Re:O'RLY (Score:3, Interesting)
How is that any different than say ... hotels charging more for a room during times they predict will have lots of visitors? Or what airlines do to sell tickets - noone flying a particular day, they'll lower the price through the floor; everybody trying to get on a flight, and they'll charge you half your liver and a kidney just to use the in-flight bathroom.
Re:Shit! (Score:4, Interesting)
The hoteling (telework) program requires that you have two years of service at the USPTO and have reached GS-12 or higher (which is also possible within two years). Before then, you have to move to the DC area to work there so that you can get adequate supervision.
There was a recent change to the hoteling program such that if you live within 50 miles of the office in Alexandria, Virginia, you don't have to meet the reporting requirement. If you live outside that radius, you have to report in to the Alexandria office on two days out of each biweek for at least an hour each day.
Some people who live outside the radius fly in on the last Friday and Saturday of one biweek, show up at work for an hour that day, make a vacation out of the rest of the weekend (get a hotel, etc.), go back to work on Monday and Tuesday of the following biweek, and fly out Tuesday. That at least means you only have to report in once a month for a long weekend.